The present invention is related to handheld medical devices, and in particular to an apparatus and method thereof to administer and manage an intelligent base unit for a handheld medical device.
Several prior art point of care (POC) systems include base units, cradles, or docking stations which provide a stable placement and position for a handheld medical device. The base units also provide a communication layer to allow the associated handheld medical device to communicate with a computer system or other information technology devices, and for charging a battery of the handheld medical device. Historically, the base units for such POC systems have served as “dumb” pass-through terminals, controlled only by hardware. For improved flexibility and better system integration, there is an increasing need for such POC systems to have base units with built-in intelligence, i.e. a micro-controller and a control flow provided in some sort of embedded firmware.
However, along with having a microcontroller and embedded firmware, comes the need to administer and manage the base units much as the handheld medical devices itself. Examples of these administrative needs include, for example, setting of configuration items by the user and firmware upgrades, wherein such prior art base units become slaved to a remote computer system in order to perform these administrative needs. One problem associated with making the base unit a slave to the remote computer system is that the point in time when an update happens may be totally inadequate. Typically, the remote computer, such as a central managing database server, is unaware of the individual circumstances in a distributed setting.
It has to be kept in mind that in order to reduce complexity and costs, the base units typically do not feature a user interface, i.e. a display or means for user input such as buttons. Without forgiving these cost advantages and adding back means for user I/O, a base unit can not be configured and administered directly (as it would be done with the POC instrument itself, for example).